More than fifteen years ago, TV exec David Levy had a bright idea: What if every NCAA tournament game could be available all at once? As he says in a new interview, it would prove to be “life changing for everybody.”
Ever since the proliferation of streaming, the cost of watching live sports has quietly exploded. Games that used to come bundled in a single cable subscription are now scattered across broadcast networks, cable channels, and streaming services—each with their own monthly fees.
Want the full slate? You’ll likely need some combination of ESPN, Peacock, Amazon, YouTube TV and a league-specific package on top of that. And, as the regional sports network model collapses, taking down channels like Bally Sports, even local fans are being pushed to purchase direct to consumer options that cost hundreds of dollars a year. All of which raises a simple question: Why is March Madness still so easy to watch? The answer traces back to a deceptively simple idea: making every game available at once. It sounds obvious now, but before 2011, viewers got whatever CBS gave them—no St. John’s game unless you were lucky; no chance to see High Point pull off an upset unless you happened to be in the right market. Now, everyone can watch what they want, when they want, and bail the second an opening round matchup gets boring. This is the way sports are meant to be experienced. But it didn’t work this way before David Levy—a 5’7” television executive from White Plains, NY who carries himself a foot taller, with a short, slightly messy coif of grey hair and a grin that seems permanently stretched ear to ear—had a very bright idea. Levy, who spent more than three decades climbing from ad salesman to president of Turner Broadcasting, helped secure and renew Turner’s NBA rights, building Inside the NBA into the rare postgame show that, as Bill Simmons puts it, occasionally improved ratings for the actual game. He expanded the company’s MLB and PGA footprints, acquired Bleacher Report and made early forays into streaming. In the process, he built Turner Sports into what NBA commissioner Adam Silver called an “industry powerhouse.” But his most consequential move may have been giving college basketball fans control over what they watch. Levy blew up the old model, replacing a system of scarcity with one built on abundance. When Levy was a student at Syracuse University in the early 1980s, the NCAA tournament lived almost entirely on CBS. The network carved the country into regions and dictated what each audience would see. If you lived in the Northeast, you got Syracuse; if you wanted UCLA, you were shit out of luck. If a game turned into a blowout, there was nowhere else to turn. That model held for decades, even as cable expanded its reach. Levy recalls arriving at Turner in 1987, entering Ted Turner’s sprawling media empire. “People use this word a lot,” Levy says, “but Ted truly was a visionary.” His new boss moved differently. His ex-wife Jane Fonda once described him as “outrageous and hysterically funny.” When Turner launched CNN, he ignored consultants from Booz Allen who told him 24-hour news networks would never make money. When he bought the Hanna-Barbera library to launch Cartoon Network, he heard the same thing—nobody would watch. But Turner trusted his gut. “A blue dog is a blue dog no matter where you are in the world,” Levy recalls him saying, a reference to Huckleberry Hound. Turner was also scrappy in a very literal sense. On the way to one early sales call at the offices of advertising firm Chiat/Day, Turner insisted that he and Levy ditch their town car and take the subway. “We got on the subway and everyone’s like ‘hey, Ted!’” says Levy. “These were the days before cell phones, so when we walked into Chiat/Day, they had a gazillion calls asking if anyone knew where Ted was.” Turner burst into the meeting, jumped on top of a desk and started pitching. That was the culture Levy absorbed: trust your gut. Be authentic and unconventional. Levy’s own opportunity to apply those lessons came in the late 2000s, when he was introduced to NCAA executive Greg Shaheen. At the time, the NCAA was considering a tournament expansion—increasing the number of teams from 65 to 96—and Shaheen was curious whether Turner would be interested in broadcasting some of the additional, early-round games. But Levy saw something bigger. The problem with the March Madness television landscape wasn’t supply; it was about access. To make more games accessible, he needed a partner. The NCAA wasn’t going to hand the tournament to a single cable network; it still wanted to leverage the reach of major networks. So Levy approached both Fox and CBS, eventually zeroing in on CBS Sports and its chairman, Sean McManus. Levy’s condition for a joint-deal was simple—and radical. “We’re going to go in as true partners,” he told McManus. That meant everything would be split: games, revenue, production, talent, even the Final Four. No A package and B package. No hierarchy. And most importantly, no more regional gatekeeping. “The idea was to have all the games shown all at the same time,” Levy said. It would, as he put it, prove to be “life changing for everybody.” The deal was expensive, complicated, and risky. It’d be a 14-year, $10.8 billion pact for the television, internet, and wireless rights to the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament. To get it approved, Levy had to convince Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes to bet big on the future of live sports during a period of cord-cutting upheaval. Bewkes pressed Levy during a board meeting: What if the cable television model collapsed? What if subscription revenue didn’t materialize? What if you’re wrong? Levy’s response was blunt: “If the cable package starts unwinding, we’re all fucked. Comcast is fucked. We’re all up shit’s creek.” The real question, he argued, was what you’d want to own if that happened. “Would you rather have the NCAA Tournament, or Seinfeld?” Then came the moment that sealed it. Bewkes suggested shortening the deal from 14 years to eight years in order to reduce risk. Levy pushed in the opposite direction. “I can’t,” he told Bewkes. “Because I want a 20-year deal, and they won’t give it to me.” His confidence was convincing. The deal went through. Alongside the expanded television footprint came something even more forward-looking: March Madness On Demand, later March Madness Live. It was an early attempt to stream live sports at scale; for the first time in NCAA Tournament history, consumers could control the games they wanted to watch. “It was very revolutionary,” Levy said. “And it was the start of streaming live sports on your phone.” Most of the sports business has moved in the opposite direction of college basketball— monetizing scarcity and restricting access to out-of-market games. In 2024, the NFL was hit with a $4.7 billion antitrust verdict over its Sunday Ticket package, with a jury finding that the league had restricted competition and inflated prices for out-of-market games. After the initial verdict was thrown out, it’s being reported that a three-judge panel on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has recently signaled it might reverse the decision. The NBA is heading into a more fragmented era after Amazon outbid Turner in 2024 to secure rights to the NBA, which means more games will be tucked behind a streamer’s paywall. The tension is especially stark given how much public money underwrites the professional and collegiate sports industry. Taxpayers subsidize stadium development through the issuance of tax-exempt debt. Local politicians grant sweetheart property tax abatements. Police and fire departments dedicate tremendous resources towards public safety during live sporting events. College football and basketball coaches are often the highest paid public employees in their respective states. Up until now the NFL itself has been operating under a special federal antitrust carveout that lets teams pool their TV rights and sell them as one package, which gives the league total control over what games fans can watch, and at what price. In exchange for all the taxpayer and government support these athletics programs and franchises receive, the least they could do is make their games more accessible. When Turner finally aired the men’s college basketball national championship game in 2014, it marked more than a changing of the guard: It was proof of concept. You could make lots of money by giving fans more, not less. Fifteen years later, much of the sports world is still catching up. Levy’s playbook hasn’t changed: find the programming gap, call the right network, and build something people will watch—whether it’s Unrivaled, a women's 3-on-3 basketball league that airs on TNT, or The Pickleball Slam, a pickleball match with a million-dollar prize featuring the biggest names in racket sports which returns to ESPN for its fourth iteration on April 15. Those ventures might sound like a novelty today. But let’s revisit them in fifteen years.
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